A new bill will allow a person to be tried and convicted of a criminal offence without seeing all the information relied on by the Crown and without the right to be present, the NZ Law Society says.

Law firm brands rank poorly says PR expert

A PR expert says that many law firms have brands that are so weak that they can be out-ranked by fictional firms. The study by Danish PR consultancy Rossen & Company asked 50 global business managers to judge the persuasiveness of a number of law firm brands. The firms were: Andersson & Cooper Associates, Reagan Rove Coolidge and JMM Global, Baker & McKenzie, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and DLA Piper. The last three in the list are well known brands in the legal profession, the first three were made up by the consultants.
The findings of the study show that the respondents were more likely to choose the fake brands than the real ones. This was not the case with global management consultants, which were also tested in the same way. Nicolai Rossen, who carried out the study told PR Week: "If you’re an unknown corporate law firm, you can position or even fake yourself as the best brand in business in the perception of the market, through publicity and the press.”

Magic Circle firm rewards associates with big bonuses
Junior lawyers at Magic Circle firm Slaughter & May have been given Christmas bonuses of £15,000 following salary increases of 10 per cent earlier in year. The payments represent between 9 and 16 per cent of salary, up from the 7.5 to 15 per cent awarded a year ago. Trainees and support staff will receive 4 per cent, up 1 per cent on 2014.

Uber updates contracts with drivers requiring arbitration
Rideshare firm Uber has sent all of its US drivers a 21-page contract which will require them to enter into arbitration with the firm rather than launch or join class-action lawsuits. It was distributed just two days after a judge in California expanded the class-action suit in the state which threatens the employment status of drivers. “Uber was obviously trying to undercut the court’s decision on Wednesday that its arbitration agreement was illegal and unenforceable," Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer with Lichten & Liss-Riordan in Boston who filed the original lawsuit told USA Today. Liss-Riordan has asked the court to block enforcement of the new agreement. Uber has said that it is not seeking to use the new agreement to block drivers from joining the Californian lawsuit and Liss-Riordan highlighted that to do so would be illegal.